Nutrition for Injury Recovery: Part 5

By John Berardi, Ph.D.

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The right food and supplements can speed injury recovery. This is important — but often ignored.

Most trainers, coaches, nutritionists, therapists understand that nutrition can play a role in injury recovery. However, in lecturing around the world, I’ve found that very few of them really know how to use food and supplements in this way.

Aside from recommending more water, topical homeopathic creams and gels, and glucosamine/chondroitin combinations, there’s really not much else on the menu when a client or athlete goes down with an acute injury.

As you can see, we kept it very simple for Georges, making only small changes to his already well thought-out nutrition plan. And adding just 4 supplements into his regimen helped to manage the inflammation process while stimulating anabolism and tissue repair.

For a detailed explanation of why we chose these particular supplements, please see the video above.

Here’s another example. Last year, while training for the 60 m sprint race at the Indoor Canadian Masters National Championships, I injured my hamstring. This is the plan I used for 4 weeks after the injury.

JB’s Plan – For 4 weeks after hamstring injury

Ice, heat, elevation, 2-4x per day

Stretching and light activation, 1x per day

ART, 2x per week

Doctor’s Best curcumin: 500 mg, 2x per day

Labrada Sorenzyme: 4 capsules, 2x per day

Fast Joint Care+: 1 capsule, 2x per day

Optimum Nutrition vitamin: 1 tab, 2x per day

o3mega fish oil: 1 tsp, 4x per day

Like Georges, my eating plan was already very good, so I didn’t really change much there. I just added a few supplements to support recovery. Again, see the video above for more.

In the end, the program worked extremely well and enabled me to compete at the National Championships, placing 3rd in my age category without any hamstring concerns.

What’s next?

That’s it for part 5 of this Nutrition for Injury video series.

At this point, you might be asking: “What’s next?”

Well, if you want to learn more about nutritional science and coaching, I highly recommend you check out our nutrition certification program.

Twice a year, we teach a small group of new students how to use advanced nutrition coaching to transform their clients’ bodies fast.

It’s called the Precision Nutrition Certification Program. And it’s designed for elite fitness, strength, and rehab professionals who want to add the latest advances in nutrition and coaching science to their skill set.